Newt blames everyone but himself for his troubles (HUGE CHEERS)

Well, we really do judge these debates like American Idol. Newt's little show of high moral dudgeon when asked at the opening gun about his ex-wife's allegations of cruel, self-serving betrayal is getting rave reviews as performance art. And it was an astounding display of the Audacity of Hubris. In the space of a minute or two, Gingrich managed to blame or condemn questioner John King, the news media, his ex-wife and Barack Obama for his being forced to address the consequences of his serial adultery. Let's consider the substance:

I will respond. I think that the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country and get decent people to run for office. I am appalled you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that. (HUGE CHEERS). Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone go through personal things. To take an ex wife and make it two days before the primary is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine. My two daughters wrote the head of ABC and made the point that it was wrong, they should pull it, and I am astounded that CNN would take trash like that and open a presidential debate. Don’t try to blame someone else, YOU chose to start this debate with this. The story is false, personal friends attest it is false, ABC is not interested because the media just wants to protect Barack Obama and attack Republicans.  I am tired of the elite media doing this. (HUGE CHEERS)

We begin with projection. The question is whether Newt is a decent person: the evidence is overwhelming that he's not. Confronted with that evidence, it's the media's job to raise the question.And "destructive, vicious, negative nature" is a pitch-perfect description of Newt and the way he's conducted political warfare for thirty years, and the way he's taught his party to conduct it.

Every person here knows personal pain. Right -- the question is how much of it they've inflicted on others. I am astounded that CNN would take trash like that and open a presidential debate. Trash = the allegations of his second wife, strikingly similar to the allegations of his first wife. Unchallenged: that he left both for women he had been carrying on affairs with (one of whom was his second wife). Trash to the trash!  ABC is not interested because the media just wants to protect Barack Obama and attack Republicans.  Gather round me, fellow Republicans!  And they did -- no one had stomach to press the attack.  

Bulletin,  Newt:  Barack Obama protected himself -- by not exposing himself to his wife and the world as the most self-serving deceptive, treacherous and cruel cad on the national stage.

All those pieties about forgiveness with which Newt's rivals dodged confronting him on this front are just so much Christianist crap.  Newt's ex-wife can forgive him if she will -- and his daughters, as they claim to. The rest of us have nothing to forgive because he did us no harm (excepting his Republican colleagues, whose crusade against Clinton he undermined).  But at our peril would we forbear to judge his character and fail to recognize him for the treacherous fraud he is.